Nicholas Clegg: We have conducted a public consultation exercise, which ran from 16 February to 11 May, to seek views on a range of proposals designed to help to remove barriers faced by disabled people who are seeking elected office. We are currently analysing the responses, and intend to announce the strategy later this year.

Nicholas Clegg: My hon. Friend is right: the issue is applicable not just to this place, but to councils up and down the country. There are clearly barriers that are impeding the participation of people with disabilities in politics at all levels. I pay tribute to those who were involved in the Speaker’s Conference on Parliamentary Representation which was started some years ago and identified this as a problem. In our access to elected office strategy, which we will announce, we will address how that might affect local councils as well as this place.

Nicholas Clegg: Yes, and that is precisely why we look forward to a Joint Committee of both Houses being established through the usual channels which will be able to get to grips with all the many questions, queries and objections that have been raised, so that we can as far as possible proceed on a cross-party basis on something which all parties are committed to seeing through.

David Winnick: That there is tension and disagreement between the two coalition parties on this issue, and perhaps on other matters, is understandable, but it was reported last week that during a recent meeting of Tory MPs one Member described the Liberal Democrats as “yellow” followed by a second word beginning with “b” then “a” and ending in “s”. Was the Deputy Prime Minister as shocked as I was by such behaviour?

Nicholas Clegg: I am the first to acknowledge that, whether it is the West Lothian question or reform of the House of Lords, these are of course not matters that are raised by our constituents or on the doorsteps
	as we campaign at election time, but it does not mean that they are unimportant. We discuss many things in this House, from local government finance to world trade rules and all sorts of things that are not raised from day to day in our local communities, but they are none the less important. That is why we as a country have been struggling with this dilemma for more than 100 years and why all three parties have a manifesto commitment finally to make progress on reforming the other place.

Mark Harper: I thought that we were going to get something good then, but that was clearly rehearsed. The hon. Lady will know from my detailed answer that the number of people who voted in the specific initiative that we set up, building on the one that the Labour party undertook for the general election, does not take into account all those personnel in Afghanistan, some of whom will have registered separately. She will know also that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister
	has made it clear that the Government plan to lengthen the campaign period for general elections so that overseas voters, including our service personnel, have more opportunity to vote. That is a very clear promise—

Nicholas Clegg: The intention will of course be to bring the legislation on the elections for police and crime commissioners into line with that on other elections. We are absolutely determined to deliver the commitment in the coalition agreement to hold the elections so that we have greater accountability in policing. Policing is something that matters to every single family and community in this country, and that is why we should make the police more accountable to the people they serve.

Peter Bone: The Deputy Prime Minister is well known for his love of Parliament and democracy. Perhaps no representations have been made on this because there is no question of the Parliament Acts being invoked at any time during this period of government because no single party was elected to government.

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Gentleman ducked the question on part 3, did he not? It is clear that he will not stand up for the NHS against the Tories. Though there has been a pause in Parliament, have not the Tories told him that on the ground they are forging ahead with this?

Charlie Elphicke: Is it not the case that the Government inherited an unreformed, unwieldy, unaccountable health service that was partly privatised, and that these reforms are necessary to secure the future of the health service for the next generation?

Nicholas Clegg: A seriously surreal doctrine is emerging. Because the hon. Gentleman was unable to persuade his colleagues to exclude the issue from the
	manifesto, he wants to circumvent the manifesto on which he stood at the last general election by way of a referendum.

Nicholas Clegg: Because we feel that the provisions in the Localism Bill, which give local communities an ability to express their views on what they want to happen in their neighbourhoods to an extent that did not exist for the 13 years under Labour, are sufficient to meet precisely the demand that the hon. Lady makes.

Edward Garnier: The priorities are to provide a prosecution service of the highest quality, informed by its core quality standards, published in April 2010, which set the standards by which the CPS is judged by itself and others; to provide a more streamlined
	and efficient service, for example by making good use of all available technology; and, by working with the police and the courts, to eliminate unnecessarily bureaucratic systems, while at all times promoting justice.

Edward Garnier: I have had no recent discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service on forced marriages, but I shall have one of my regular meetings with the director later today, at which I have no doubt that the matter will be discussed. The CPS and the Law Officers are studying the Home Affairs Committee’s report on forced marriages, and the Government will respond to it in due course.

Karl Turner: The director of the Serious Fraud Office has said:
	“My concern has always been if investigations and prosecution powers…are split, the fight against complex economic crime will damaged.”
	Does the Minister share those concerns? If so, why are this Government insistent on letting dodgy bankers off?

Jim Murphy: Thank you for allowing the urgent question, Mr Speaker.
	The Opposition have always made clear that we support the stated aims of the military operation in Libya: to enforce UN Security Council resolution 1973, to protect Libyan civilians, and to implement a no-fly zone. We have also made clear not just that we support the Government and the UN mandate, but that it is crucial for Parliament to have an opportunity to scrutinise Government decisions and the campaign in Libya.
	Yesterday the newspaper Le Figaro reported that 12 French helicopters had been dispatched to Libya on 17 May. There was no comment from the Ministry of Defence other than
	“we are constantly reviewing our options”,
	but the French Defence Minister, Gérard Longuet, said:
	“The British, who have assets similar to ours, will also commit…The sooner the better is what the British think.”
	Is that an accurate statement by a French Minister of the British Government’s policy on Libya? The British people will be desperately concerned that French Ministers seem to know more about the deployment of British military equipment than the British Parliament.
	Parliament has not written the Government a blank cheque on Libya, and Ministers should never keep the British public in the dark about major deployments. This is a serious moment, and it would be a serious escalation if such a commitment were to be made. Parliament should never be kept in the dark.
	I want to ask the Minister a number of questions. First, why have discussions about an escalation of such magnitude with our French partners and colleagues reached such an advanced stage without Parliament being allowed even the courtesy of discussion or scrutiny? Secondly, can the Minister go into more detail about the situation on the ground which is leading Ministers at least to consider—and, in a private conversation with the French, to confirm—this military commitment?
	Thirdly, if this were to happen, would the operational allowance be extended to those serving in and around Libya in the same way as in respect of Afghanistan? Fourthly, does the hon. Gentleman agree with the Defence Analysis estimation that the cost of the conflict could be £1 billion by September? Finally, can he say more about the UK’s military capability to maintain the current tempo, and have the Government decided to order further Brimstone?
	Parliament thought long and hard about whether to commit military force over Libya on behalf of the United Kingdom. The House sought in good conscience to take a deep and significant decision about our nation, and now we are expected simply to wave through a possible major escalation in military commitment without a proper debate in Parliament. It is utterly unacceptable that the UK Parliament has to be informed about a possible deployment of UK forces by the French Defence Minister.
	On this complicated issue, the Government need to provide greater clarity. On behalf of this Parliament and those who voted for this conflict, which we support—and, indeed, on behalf of those who voted against the conflict—Parliament is right to demand that decisions such as this one are announced in this Parliament, debated in this Parliament, scrutinised in this Parliament, and should never be kept from Parliament again.

Nick Harvey: The right hon. Gentleman quotes the French Minister, and my understanding is that the French have indeed taken a decision to deploy their attack helicopters in Libya. I state again for the avoidance of all doubt that no such decision has been taken by the United Kingdom. It is an option that we are considering, but no decision has been taken, and there is absolutely no sense in which it is true to say that we have kept Parliament in the dark about a decision that we have taken.
	I do not accept that if we were to take the decision to use attack helicopters at some point in the future, that would be an “escalation” of what we are doing in Libya. The targets would remain the same; it would simply be a tactical shift in what assets we used to try to hit those targets. The right hon. Gentleman asks why we would consider doing this, and what would be the military logic of contemplating using attack helicopters. The principal advantage it would give us over the air assets we are currently deploying is the ability to strike moving targets with greater precision.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the costs. I do not recognise the figure he gives. It is not possible to compute in real time a figure, but I say to him again that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it clear that the cost of this operation will be met by the reserve.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about maintaining the momentum. We keep our stocks under regular review, including specifically of Brimstone. We are content that we can keep going for the foreseeable future, but we will have to make adjustments as time goes on and make calculations as to whether it will be necessary to increase our stocks.
	On the operational allowance, the arrangements will remain as they are, but we are looking into the possibility of extending special consideration for those who would not meet the normal criteria.
	The Government have been doing their utmost to ensure that the House is kept informed about what is going on. There have been debates and questions, and
	we have given several briefings, and if the right hon. Gentleman feels at any stage that he needs more information, he only needs to ask and we will do everything we can to afford him that information. We are involved in a military operation, however. We have to consider from time to time the tactics we are using, and you will understand, Mr Speaker, why we would not do so in advance on the Floor of the House. Apart from anything else, telling the enemy exactly what we are up to would be a very unusual strategy. As soon as decisions are taken, however, we will ensure that Parliament is informed.

David Winnick: Like many others, I am very concerned about the kind of massive air raid that took place last night, which will inevitably cause civilian casualties, although I entirely accept that the Gaddafi regime will try to make as much propaganda of it as possible. Is the Minister aware that there is an increasing feeling that, despite denials, resolution 1973 is being used for regime change? I emphasise again that regime change is totally outside international law.

Nick Harvey: We are very familiar with the terms of UNSCR 1973, which remains absolutely our abiding objective. I recognise that there are risks inherent in whatever military options we take, but let me reassure the House that we are doing our utmost, and so are our NATO allies, to ensure that there is no loss of civilian life. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that is in sharp distinction from the Gaddafi regime, which is retaining that loss as its objective and is continuing to cause it. We are there to prevent it from doing so.

Nick Harvey: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is certainly the case that the use of attack helicopters in contested territory is inherently dangerous—about that there can be no doubt—but they have been used elsewhere very effectively and those dangers have not had a deadly effect. I repeat that this is a consideration of using another tactic; this is not a step change in what we are doing. The suggestion that while we are in the course of operations we would come to the House of Commons for a full debate and a fresh resolution every time we took an operational tactical decision is not realistic, and I do not think it would be justified.

Nick Harvey: There are certainly immense humanitarian difficulties in various parts of Libya, the most obvious example being Misrata. We were among several nations to sustain the pressure to get supplies and relief into Misrata. There has been some success in that operation, but one does not want to overclaim on that. It remains an overwhelming priority to ensure that we can relieve humanitarian suffering by all means possible.

Dennis Skinner: Has not this intervention been subject to mission creep ever since it began, as statements to the House have indicated? There has been a little bit of help here, the use of special forces there and further intervention. It is no surprise to me that the French, who initiated the intervention in the first place because of an election in France next year, are now telling the British Government what the next phase is. How many civilians, whom we were supposed to safeguard, have been killed by NATO forces? When will we reach £1 billion expenditure on this intervention, which is paid for by the British taxpayer? Is it right what the media say that it will be at the end of this summer, or will it be even sooner?

Stephen Gilbert: I do not see this as an escalation but rather as a proper tactical response to a changing tactical situation on the ground which is in line with UN resolution 1973. We know from Afghanistan and Somalia that helicopters can be more vulnerable to attack than fixed-wing aircraft. What assessment has been made of UK search and rescue capability should one of our helicopters unfortunately be downed?

Thomas Docherty: Will the Minister update the House as to how many countries have now sent military advisers to Libya to help the rebels? Can he confirm who is responsible for co-ordinating their work?

Nick Harvey: In my initial answer I was quoting the Foreign Secretary, who said, quite rightly, that we had to step up the pressure on the Gaddafi regime through military, economic and political-diplomatic channels. That is true. I do not, however, accept that there is any significant escalation or a broadening of our military objectives. It remains the case that our overriding objective is to prevent the threat to civilian life, and if there are different assets which different members of the international force working in Libya can bring to bear at different points in time, I do not think that such micro-operational decisions need bother the Secretary-General of the UN. However, if we were to shift focus significantly on what we were doing, that would be of a different order altogether, and the UN very well might be involved.

Vincent Cable: Today I am publishing detailed plans for a green investment bank, building on the announcements that the Deputy Prime Minister made yesterday. Copies of the document will be placed in the Libraries and will be available to download on the BIS website. I would like to take the opportunity to inform the House of these proposals.
	The UK will be the first country in the world to create a bank dedicated to the greening of the economy. This Government are committed to ensuring that the UK makes a successful transition to a low-carbon economy. This will be a big challenge. The UK is committed by law to a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025. Over the coming decades, much of the UK’s energy, transport and waste infrastructure will have to be revolutionised or even rebuilt in order to achieve the ambition of decarbonised electricity, low-emission cars and an end to landfill. This transition will involve considerable costs, but also considerable benefits if new enterprise can seize the opportunities presented by the green economy. The task for our Government is to ensure that these benefits exceed the costs.
	Vital to achieving a successful transition is the development of well-designed, long-term and stable policies. They are needed to provide the incentive for businesses to invest in new green infrastructure, which by its very nature repays the investment only over many years. To this end the Government have introduced a carbon price floor, proposals on electricity market reform, the green deal for energy efficiency in buildings, a major waste policy review and new initiatives to encourage the roll-out of electric vehicles.
	However, the lack of available finance could be a limiting factor. Detailed research and market analysis have established the need for an institution to address market failures that are constraining the flow of finance. The proposals published today set out a vision for a new and enduring institution—the world’s first dedicated national green investment bank—to complement the existing policy landscape.
	The green investment bank’s mission will be to accelerate private sector investment, with an initial remit to focus on relatively high-risk projects which are otherwise likely to proceed slowly or not at all. It will work to a “double bottom line” of both achieving significant environmental impact and making financial returns delivering value for money. It will also operate independently and at arm’s length from Government, who will agree its strategic long-term priorities. Initial market analysis suggests that the early contenders to be priority sectors for the bank are offshore wind, industrial energy efficiency and waste, but a wider range of energy and other activities could become relevant over time.
	The new institution will need to comply with state aid rules. Therefore, the proposals that I am publishing today will need to be approved by the European Commission before we can establish the bank. The time to act is now, so in order to make rapid progress, from April 2012 my department will start to make direct, state aid-compliant investments in green infrastructure projects. Investments could be in the form of equity,
	subordinated debt or senior debt on a pari passu basis. In due course, we will transfer these investments to the new institution.
	I am also creating a green bank advisory group, comprising independent finance experts, who will advise Government on the setting up and strategic direction of the new institution. Sir Adrian Montague has very kindly agreed to chair this advisory group.
	As the Chancellor set out in the Budget this year, the initial capitalisation of the GIB will be £3 billion and the bank will invest with and through the private sector and tackle risks which the private sector cannot adequately finance. In this way, the bank will mobilise projects significantly in excess of the Government’s contribution. With the funding provided in this Parliament the GIB could mobilise an extra £15 billion of private investment. We do not envisage that this level of activity will require a large institution—an estimated 50 to 100 professional staff during this Parliament. Proposals have been made to locate the headquarters in, among others, London, Edinburgh and Bristol, and a decision will be taken in due course based on their ability to deliver the aims of the bank.
	The Government will enable the GIB to have borrowing powers from 2015-16 and once debt is falling as a percentage of GDP, which will allow it to scale up its operations significantly at a time when the financing need is greatest. We are not seeking at this stage to be prescriptive about which form borrowing should take or, more generally, about the bank’s products or structure. Once state aid approval is achieved, we will move to enshrine the institution’s enduring status in legislation.
	In conclusion, setting up a bank of this kind is a major undertaking. There is much work to be done to build and grow the green investment bank, and the Government look forward to updating the House on further milestones in future.

John Denham: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, but although the Deputy Prime Minister announced this policy yesterday and the statement was timed for 12.30 pm today, I had not received a copy by 10 minutes to 1, and did not receive it until 5 to 1.
	A successful green investment bank can make a significant contribution to developing low-carbon technologies and enabling British companies to succeed in the low-carbon green technology markets of the future. That is why the green investment bank was in Labour’s manifesto. Will the Business Secretary confirm that it has taken a year of infighting to get to this stage? Is it not true that the Government are at odds over green policy, and will he confirm that only a month ago he tried to block the adoption of the carbon emissions targets announced this week? So much for “the greenest Government ever”!
	Progress is welcome, but have the Government not already taken a series of decisions that have damaged investment in green technologies and activities? Did they not set feed-in tariffs that encouraged many investors into green energy and then suddenly change the rules, leaving investors high and dry and deeply cynical about the Government’s commitment to green technology? Is the Business Secretary aware that the target for zero-carbon homes by 2016 was encouraging new and innovative business approaches to architecture, building technology,
	skills training and offset technologies? It was already encouraging a supply chain to make our homes greener. Now that has been changed by the flip-flops of Government decision making. Is it not true that when the Severn barrage was abandoned the Government ruled out any tidal investment for five years, so that when this country turns to tidal power we will end up relying on foreign technology?
	Despite all the talk of private investment, where is the evidence for it? Is it not damning that the Pew Environment Group’s report in March stated that investment in renewable technology in the UK crashed from £11 billion in 2009 to £3.3 billion in 2010—due, it says, to political uncertainty. That saw the UK drop from sixth to 13th in the ranking of countries encouraging green investment—another example of the Tories letting go Labour’s green legacy.
	As with the green deal and the electricity market reforms, green businesses know enough about the green investment bank to be excited, but not enough to start planning investments and changing business models. Does the Business Secretary not accept that the bank will not work without much greater consistency, certainty and clarity about Government policies for green energy and the low-carbon economy than we have seen to date? Can he tell the House when the green investment bank legislation will be brought forward? Will he publish draft legislation so that all those interested can help shape it and ensure that the bank truly does become a long-term part of the infrastructure? How will the bank be staffed, and will he ensure that it is not an offshoot of the Treasury or his Department? Will he learn the lessons of Labour’s technology strategy board, where private sector leadership and real operational independence have helped to contribute to its considerable success? Given non-governmental organisations’ role in shaping all parties’ policies on this issue, will the Secretary of State at least consider allowing an NGO representative to join in the work of the advisory board that he proposes to set up?
	Will the Secretary of State tell the House why the bank will be barred from raising its own finance until 2015 at the earliest? What does he say to the CBI, which made it clear at the time of the Budget that the investment
	“is welcome, but the bank should have powers to borrow from the outset to give investors confidence.”
	Has the Treasury imposed this rule? If so, is that not another case of the Government allowing their preferred reckless approach to deficit reduction to take priority over the investment in jobs and growth that would make it easier to get the deficit down?
	Can the Secretary of State confirm that, as of today, he does not even know whether the activities of the green investment bank will be on or off the public balance sheet? And is it not essential that that is clarified at the earlier possible opportunity? Does he not recognise that denying early investment in fledgling green industries will hinder their ability to create and expand into new markets? Does he agree that, above all, the UK needs long-term investment in the innovative, entrepreneurial companies that have the potential to become the pace setters and global market leaders of the future?
	Does the Secretary of State recognise the risk that the available funds could easily be absorbed by major energy supply companies—companies that, relatively speaking
	at least, have access to capital—which would invest largely in the installation of established technologies, often supplied by overseas companies? Does he recognise that that risk could prevent UK-based innovators and suppliers from winning market share and developing the established technologies of the future? What assurances can be given that the bank will focus not only on the areas of activity named by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday, but on the less mature technologies that remain unmentioned, such as solar and marine energy?
	There is clearly a balance to be struck between major infrastructure investment and all the activities of innovative companies, but will the Secretary of State tell us how he intends to ensure, in the legislation that will set out the green investment bank’s remit, that he will strike the right balance between those activities?
	Finally, given the huge uncertainty and inconsistency that the Government have shown over the past year, can the Business Secretary set out how he intends to create greater confidence in green industry companies about the future direction of Government policy? There was precious little about that in the Government’s growth plan, but without that market confidence none of the high hopes that we all share for the green investment bank will come to fruition.

Andrew Bridgen: Historically, whatever services the Government decide to offer, the private sector tends to withdraw from, so what steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the green investment bank complements private sector investment in green technologies and does not merely replace it?

Robert Flello: The ceramic industry in my city of Stoke-on-Trent will be listening and watching very carefully as the green investment bank develops, but my question is specifically about an engineering firm in my constituency which was looking to manufacture the gearing systems for refurbishing wind turbines. It had no joy from Advantage West Midlands, and it has had no joy from the local enterprise partnership, because it has no funds, so can the Secretary of State reassure me, and the firm, that the green investment bank will be on its feet quickly, and will not be so prescriptive that the company might just as well go to a moneylender, because the terms and conditions will be so tight?

Anne McIntosh: I congratulate the Business Secretary on bringing forward this proposal, and I hope that the bank will come to York and north Yorkshire. May I ask for a commitment from him—that in trying to resolve one environmental problem he does not inadvertently create another? Can he assure the House that the business and environmental cases for offshore wind turbines, in particular, will meet the strictest and most stringent conditions?

Simon Hughes: I would hope that throughout the UK there will be real enthusiasm for the announcement that by 2015 there will be £18 billion-worth of investment in green industries. Can the Secretary of State add to that enthusiasm by sharing his vision of what sector of the economy green industries may represent and the number of jobs that that will bring to Britain? In addition, our tidal and wind can be linked with projects such as the European renewable energy project and solar power from the south of Europe, thus transforming the whole of our energy economy.

Vincent Cable: I did not follow fully where the hon. Gentleman was going, but no, as I understand it that is not the intention. The £3 billion contribution from the Government is not tied to any specific source.

Vincent Cable: The bank is a UK-wide institution which will apply in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, so I do not see any problems of that kind. As regards the cross-border aspects, the hon. Gentleman raises an interesting legal question which I will need to look at carefully.

William Bain: Since 2004, the US Treasury has had the facility to issue up to $2 billion in green bonds to enhance the green economy in the United States, and since 2007, the European Investment Bank has issued more than €1 billion in climate awareness bonds. Is not it a real lost opportunity that the Secretary of State has been unable to persuade the Chancellor to keep to his pre-election commitment to introduce green bonds in the United Kingdom?

Vincent Cable: As I said, there is a variety of possible ways of raising funding, one of which is obviously the capital markets. If and when the institution goes to the capital markets, the investment could well take the form of bonds marketed in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. I am sure that we should draw on those experiences.

Chris Bryant: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You may recall that last Monday, 16 May, we had a statement from the Secretary of State for Defence about the military covenant. Following that, because a lot of it had been leaked to the newspapers over the weekend, I raised a point of order in which I said that
	“the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan)”
	had
	“on the record”
	given
	“quotations to The Daily Telegraph”,
	announcing the policy before doing so in the Chamber. The Under-Secretary then said, in some kind of clarification:
	“If the hon. Gentleman cares to read what was in the newspapers, he will discover that what he has said is not in fact in any way correct.”—[Official Report, 16 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 43-44.]
	I have now read the newspapers. The Saturday edition of The  Daily Telegraph to which I referred says clearly:
	“a defence minister told The Daily Telegraph that the Government’s plans, to be announced in the House of Commons on Monday, would put the covenant ‘on a statutory basis for the first time’.”
	In case there is any doubt about who that Minister was, the article later says:
	“Andrew Robathan, the defence minister…told The Daily Telegraph…‘We are putting the military covenant on a statutory basis for the first time.’”
	It is one thing for a Minister to leak something to the national newspapers before it is said in this House. It is quite another for a Minister to give the House a very misleading understanding of what they have done. I do not think that the words said by the Under-Secretary in the Chamber can possibly be squared with what was in the newspaper. I hope, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you will ask Mr Speaker to ensure that the Under-Secretary comes back to the House to make the true situation absolutely clear.

Lindsay Hoyle: What has been said is on the record for everyone to know, and quite rightly. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will refer the matter to Mr Speaker, and that he will look at what has been said today.

Lindsay Hoyle: As a long-serving Member, the hon. Lady is well aware that that is not a point for me to rule on, but the Government Front Benchers will have heard it. There does not seem to be much movement from them to comment, so we will move on.

Mark Reckless: My hon. Friend is quite correct. There is talk of establishing a permanent bail-out arrangement, and we, the United Kingdom, have a veto over that. We should use that veto to relieve ourselves of all liability under a mechanism that should never have been agreed. That is what my motion proposes, and the amendment fails to do so.
	When the European financial stability mechanism was set up, we were told that there would be €60 billion in it, whereas €440 billion would be paid by the eurozone members. Yet in the case of every bail-out we find that the mechanism is used to the same level as, or even more than, the eurozone facility. We in the House and this country are being forced to pay for the mistakes of others, and only this House has the power to stand up, vote and say no.
	The whole mechanism is illegal. Let us remember Maastricht and the "no bail-out" clause that the Germans insisted on. What has happened to that? Let us remember article 122 of Lisbon, which states that the mechanism is for natural disasters or other exceptional circumstances beyond the member states’ control. Did not Ireland, Portugal and Greece decide to sign up to the euro? Portugal has barely grown at all as a country since it joined the euro, and it has done next to nothing to control its spending. I am afraid there is nothing exceptional about that, and nothing beyond its control. It is just using the mechanism, to which we should have said no, to make our constituents pay for its own mistakes.

William Cash: Does my hon. Friend recall that Madame Lagarde herself, the prospective head of the International Monetary Fund, said on 17 December last year on that very point:
	“We violated all the rules because we wanted to close ranks and really rescue the euro zone”?
	She was being very clear and telling the truth.

Mark Reckless: My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is quite right.I hear that that lady is a good friend of the Chancellor, but I do not believe that we should put the debtors in charge of the bank. The IMF money, too, or 5% or so of it, is our constituents’ and taxpayers’ money. We should have an emerging market candidate to run the fund, and we should not
	allow the eurozone to continue to perpetuate a French-led IMF that nods through bail-outs with no restructuring and no devaluation. The markets know, and all of us know in our hearts, that bail-outs will not work.
	The eurozone says that there will be a “soft restructuring”. In other words, when Greece, Portugal, Ireland or—who knows?—Spain cannot pay back what it has promised, the eurozone will say, “Oh, don’t worry about it, we’ll just roll it over.” In the City, they call that an extend-and-pretend policy. Such a policy was pursued in Japan for the whole of the 1990s, which then lost two decades of growth instead of dealing with the banks and recognising its insolvency. The European Central Bank should avoid that. Unless and until the ECB deals with that problem and understands that the assets that it has taken supposedly to back the loans are worth far short of what it currently assumes, the banks will not lend, because they do not to whom it is safe to lend. The ECB should write those assets down and have that reckoning. The extend-and-pretend policy—the patching up and bailing out, and the throwing of good money after bad—is destined to fail.
	Why are we supporting a currency that we very wisely did not join, after warning exactly what would happen? I ask Members of this House to stand up for their constituents. We should require—yes, require—the Treasury to vote against the use of the bail-out mechanism. If the EU does not agree to that, we should require the Treasury to use our veto over the permanent bail-out mechanism until we are extracted and removed from all liability. We should never have been liable for that mechanism. We know that it is unlawful and that that is not for our currency.
	It is right that we stand up for our taxpayers and our constituents, who look to us as Members of this House to do so. They do not look to us to seek permission from those on the Treasury Bench, or to urge them to do something rather than require them to do something. Surely as Members of the House we are more than that. Surely our country is more than a star on somebody else’s flag. I urge all hon. Members to vote no to the Government-sponsored amendment.

Kelvin Hopkins: It is a great pleasure to speak in this important debate and to support the motion of the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). I hope very much to have the opportunity to vote for the motion as it stands rather than in amended form.
	Today of all days is important because the crisis and contagion in the eurozone is spreading. As reported in the Financial Times and other journals, there are serious problems in Spain, where there is youth unemployment of 41%, and where the economy is in serious crisis, and even in Italy. Those are major economies, not small countries. If we are dragged into a mechanism to save the eurozone even in one of the smaller countries, we would be throwing good money after bad, as the hon. Gentleman said. Bail-outs have been required for Greece and Ireland, and there might be one for Portugal, but those are relatively small countries in EU terms. Spain and Italy are much larger, and bail-outs for them would be prohibitive.
	As I have said in the Chamber several times before, it is time to urge the EU to accept the recreation of national currencies for countries that cannot sustain membership of the eurozone. As I and many others have argued, strong currencies derive from strong economies, not the other way around. The Deutschmark was a strong currency because the German economy was strong. Weak economies cannot cope over time when a strong currency is thrust upon them. The best example of that was Argentina, which chose mistakenly to link its currency formally to the US dollar. For 10 years, it struggled, and its economy was almost destroyed before it bailed out and recreated its own currency—not before billions of its dollars had gone abroad. The Argentine economy, which had been one of the strongest on South America, became very weak, simply because it adopted a strong currency, and someone else’s currency at that. Adopting a strong currency that an economy cannot sustain is a foolish decision.
	The right to flex a currency as of need is a vital component of economic management. Indeed, at Bretton Woods in the 1940s, it was argued that depreciations and appreciations could be appropriate for different countries, even though a stable exchange rate system was agreed after the second world war.

Kelvin Hopkins: Throughout the period of the Labour Government, I put the views that I have put in this debate. I hope that I had some influence, but in the end, the Government decide what they must. They will not necessarily do what Back Benchers like me suggest. Nevertheless, I am on record as writing and speaking on such things many times in the past.
	We must bring this crisis to a head. The way to do that is to say, “No more bail-outs. Let’s start recreating national currencies.” I have said that directly to some of our friends in Ireland, when members of the European Scrutiny have met Irish politicians.

Stephen Williams: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is right to say that we need flexibility. Because we are not in the euro, we are not a participant in the far greater funding of the facility. I think that the figure involved is €400 billion. Our exposure is therefore quite limited.
	That leads me on to my next point. The loan to Ireland involves about €7 billion, which is roughly equivalent to the maximum theoretical exposure of the United Kingdom to the loans that we have participated in under the European financial stability mechanism. So what is the cost to the UK? I have already mentioned our IMF and bilateral loan contributions, which we make irrespective of our EU or euro membership. We are outside the EFSM, as I have said, and our EFSM contribution is restricted to the UK share of the European Union budget, which is roughly 12.5%. Our total theoretical exposure is therefore about €7.5 billion, which is roughly equivalent to the bilateral loan that we have decided, of our own volition, to give to our close friend and neighbour, Ireland.
	Our contribution to those loans—I emphasise that they are loans—is at risk only if there is a default on the part of the member states receiving them. It is the expectation, when loans are made in the ordinary course of business, and certainly between nation states, that they will be repaid without default, and that they will be repaid with interest. If Ireland and Portugal repay those loans in a timely manner and with interest—the interest rate is quite a hefty one—it will important to ensure that the interest is credited back to the United Kingdom.
	A real cost would be incurred if we did not support our fellow EU member states, which are, after all, our closest trading partners. It would simply not be in the UK’s national interest to watch the eurozone fail and even break up, as I suspect some of my coalition colleagues would like it to do. The resulting massive instability among our closest trading partners on our doorstep would not be in our national interest. I plead with the ministerial team to make the case more strongly on behalf of the Government that UK assistance at this time is in the British national interest, and that it is not merely the result of some philosophical commitment to the European Union, whether by the Liberal Democrats—whom I heard being blamed earlier—or by anyone else. Indeed, if we were not making those contributions via the European financial stability mechanism, it is possible that we would be making higher bilateral contributions or having a higher call on our funds because of our treaty obligations relating to the IMF. It is also right, however, that any such support should be temporary, and that, from 2013, the eurozone should be able to wash its own face and support itself through the proposed new European stability mechanism. It will then be up to
	Britain to decide whether it wishes to give bilateral assistance, when it is in our national interest to support our closest friends and neighbours.

William Cash: I could not agree more, and a course of Alcoholics Anonymous would not be out of place.
	It is not just the European Scrutiny Committee that said the position was legally unsound or unlawful. Madam Lagarde herself, the prospective head of the IMF, said on this issue on 17 December:
	“We violated all the rules because we wanted to close ranks and really rescue the eurozone.”
	This is a stitch-up of the British people to maintain the so-called solidarity for further integration of a failing European project. That is what lies at the heart of the matter.
	Why are people protesting and rioting all over Europe —in Madrid, Greece, Italy and the list is growing? What is not growing is the European economy and the reason is that the sort of policies needed—here and in all the other countries—to engender growth to deal with the deficit that the Government rightly say we have to address are impossible to achieve without generating the growth that is needed by repealing legislative burdens and generating policies that the integrationists in Europe simply refuse to allow. I would go further and say that the coalition in this country cannot achieve growth simply because the Liberal Democrats, as part of the coalition, have silenced the Prime Minister’s promise to repatriate burdens on business. It is called 56 votes and the keys to No. 10.

Austin Mitchell: I largely agree with the argument about the incompatibility of eurozone countries, as the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash)
	outlined, although I do not agree with his defence of the Government. If we going to pay tribute to anybody it should be to the previous Chancellor, who, against great opposition from the Liberal Democrats and from sections of the Labour party, kept us out of the euro and avoided the consequences that have fallen on the eurozone states that are now in need of support and finance.
	I do not think that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) should feel uncomfortable about his lonely defence of the euro as he sits there like an Amplex advert on two empty Benches—because nobody wants to sit with somebody who is going to defend the euro in his kind of fashion—as the Liberal party policy has always been, “My euro right or wrong.” I can well remember, as can many others, the exchange rate mechanism crisis. Just as the ERM was about to collapse, there were the Liberals chanting, “Move to the narrower bands now” in unison with a lemming-like folly, which the hon. Gentleman demonstrated again today. He should not worry about this peculiar position; he should say with triumph that the Liberal Democrats have persuaded the coalition into accepting and financing these bail-outs. It is not a small sum. He mentioned a liability for £7.5 billion—this from a Government who are cutting Sure Start children’s centres and police budgets and who cannot afford anything for beneficiaries in this country, yet who are prepared to back a bail-out that could cost us £7.5 billion.
	To have persuaded the cautious Conservatives, who have always been rather sceptical about Europe, to accept that position must be a triumph for the Liberal Democrats, in which I think they should rejoice. It is a demonstration of the impossibility of the eurozone’s working. What we are being asked to do today is pay for the consequences of the fact that it could never have worked because it brings together incompatible economies. It brings together the southern economies, which are frankly uncompetitive, and many of which are close to defaulting in any case, and the powerful German economy, where inflation is kept very low by agreement between the two sections of industry, continuous investment and continuous improvement.
	The southern economies, which have higher rates of inflation and lower rates of productivity, can never keep up. The gap therefore widens, and Germany comes more and more to dominate the European economy, to a point at which the others must deflate to clear the deficits caused by their balance of trade with Germany. That is the incompatibility with which we are dealing, and that is the cause of the problems of the southern states in which we are being asked to involve ourselves—although we kept out of the euro, in the face of some derision from the Liberal Democrats and, indeed, liberal opinion in the country as a whole.
	We kept out, so why should we be responsible for the failures implicit in the euro? There are only two possibilities for the countries that are now failing and needing help or the ability to default. They can deflate, which they are being asked to do to a degree that is impossible for their electors to accept, or they can get someone to write off their debts, a strategy mentioned by the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). They cannot do what France and Italy did for many years when they became uncompetitive and their balance of payments deficits built up, and simply devalue. Such action was precluded first by the European exchange rate mechanism, which broke up because it became
	impossible, and it is certainly precluded now by the euro. These failing countries can have no recourse to either reducing interest rates or accepting adjustments to the exchange rate, as this country has done, and they have therefore moved towards a crisis.
	I cannot conceive why we—having kept out of the euro and warned of the consequences of joining the euro, and having drawn attention to what was implicit in a system that brought together incompatible states with different rates of productivity and competitiveness and with no central mechanism to redistribute or help them with their difficulties—should be asked to contribute to the bail-outs, and I therefore strongly support the motion. I cannot see what the sob sisters who tabled the amendment have to offer by saying, “Let us talk about it later.” Let us talk about it now, because the House must be the master of its own destinies and the country’s destinies.
	This cannot be left to a Government who, in European matters, are always facing the threat of the tar baby. One contact with the euro, and countries are dragged in; one contact with Europe, and they are dragged endlessly into further and further commitments to a line that is impossible to hold. We should say in the Chamber today, “We cannot hold this line. We will not help to hold this line. It is not our problem.”

Chris Heaton-Harris: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from ‘unsound’ to the end of the Question and add:
	‘urges the Government to raise the issue of the EFSM at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers or the European Council; and supports any measures which would lead to an agreement for a Eurozone-only arrangement.’.
	As you have made amply clear, Mr Deputy Speaker, we do not have much time. I therefore intend to confine my remarks to the subjects raised in my amendment and to the politics behind it.
	The motion argues that there is no legal base for making EU money available for bail-outs. It questions the idea that the natural disasters clause can be used to justify using EU funds to pay the countries concerned. Let me say at the outset that the amendment does not touch the very important line in the original motion which states that the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member,
	“has stated its view that the EFSM is legally unsound.”
	Let me now deal with some of the politics of today, which were observed by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

Anne Main: I appreciate that my hon. Friend was trying to be helpful, but it his amendment seems deeply unhelpful to those who wanted the strength of the original motion to be negated, and to have been able to vote on it.

Chris Heaton-Harris: I will say more about the politics later in my speech. In any event, I believe that if either my amendment or the original motion is passed, the House of Commons will be the first member state Parliament to question formally the legality of the stability mechanism.
	The remaining part of my amendment involves a fairly academic argument. Does any Member in the House truly believe that, with the Greek economy running out of cash, market fears that the Eurozone contagion will spread and reveal itself at the heart of the Spanish and Italian economies, and the continuing problems in Ireland and Portugal, this matter was not going to be up-front and central at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers or the European Council? I should like to think that those problems are not only the first item on the agenda for such meetings, but being discussed every day throughout the Governments of Europe.
	Bail-outs have become what they were always going to be: politically toxic, not only for those who provide the cash—the local election results in Bremen at the weekend underlined that—but, much more, for the Governments of the countries receiving the money, who have to introduce economic measures that are politically unpalatable to the people, as so many Spanish socialists found last weekend. Whatever senior advisors of Governments across Europe may think, the markets have already decided—and I consider it to be a matter of fact—that the Greek bail-out has not worked and will be renegotiated.
	What I believe my hon. Friend for the Member Rochester and Strood is after is a vote that will prevent us from providing any more money for these bail-outs through the EFSM. Alas, although the UK could vote against any proposal presented—and I should like to think that it would—the simple fact is that because of
	the disastrous advice given to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the consequent actions that he took at meetings on 9 and 10 May last year as the last Government were leaving office, the UK entered the mechanism. Moreover, the Council decides on these matters now, and will do so in the future, by means of qualified majority voting.

Chris Heaton-Harris: Absolutely—and let me make perfectly clear that, thanks to what Labour did a year ago as it was leaving office, the EU cannot veto the grant of an EU loan or credit line extended via the European financial stability mechanism.

Kate Hoey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Chris Heaton-Harris: I will happily give way.

Ian Davidson: The wider question we need to address is why it appears that this Government are consistently going soft on the European Union. When they were elected, the impression was given that they were going to be much tougher on Europe than the previous Government had been, and I welcomed that different position, on that issue if on no other. I welcomed the fact that the Conservatives gave the impression they were going to stand up to Europe much more than the previous Government, and that they were going to seek opportunities not only to repatriate powers but to reduce the amount of money we give to the EU and to pursue all possible ways to clip the European Commission’s wings. Why, therefore, has it come to pass that they seem to be simply acquiescing in so much that goes on in the EU?
	I do not for a moment accept that the current Government should be allowed to hide behind the playground argument that a big boy did it and then ran away. I accept that the previous Government were not without fault in this matter, but simply to say that they did it so there is absolutely nothing whatever we can do about it now, is not acceptable. To their credit politically, this Government have said in respect of a whole number of policy areas that they wish to reverse the previous Government’s line, and they are taking steps to do so. Where they believe it is important, they have taken steps to undo the previous Government’s work—and I oppose what they have done—yet in this area they seem unwilling to do so. I simply do not understand that, unless they have struck a secret deal with the Liberals whereby the Liberal tail is wagging the Conservative dog.
	Today’s debate appears to be largely a row among Tory Eurosceptics, with the provisional wing arguing against the official wing. I cannot accept that people I have heard speaking in a Eurosceptic fashion on other issues seriously believe that the Brussels bureaucrats are going to be terrified by the prospect of the British Government raising the issue—I can just see them running off into the bars to have a stiff drink in fear lest this issue be raised! Goodness me, if the drafters of this amendment had been serious they might have said that they urged the Government to “Stamp their foot on the floor if they do not get their way,” or “Write rude words
	on the toilet wall if nobody pays any attention,” because that would have much the same impact. This is a bit like a child in the classroom threatening to hold their breath until they are sick unless teacher gives them an apple. It is weak and miserable, and smacks of the Yosser Hughes phrase, “Gissa job.”
	Those who drafted and signed the amendment have been far too easily bought off by the Government Whips. Perhaps some among them are deluded, but perhaps the others have set their price too low. If Members show our party Whips that we are prepared to be resolute, even though they might have told us that their current offer—or bribe—is the only one available, they will ultimately find another that might be more to our liking.
	We must recognise that the eurozone’s problems are economic manifestations of political problems. The eurozone—its creation and membership—is clearly a political construct, and the admission of Greece was politically, rather than economically, decided. I think we all know that the Greeks lied about their economy in order to get into the eurozone. The problems that have now arisen have not come out of a clear blue sky; not only were they predictable, they were predicted. It was predicted that these problems would arise. Therefore, those who are now running about like headless chickens pretending it is all the fault of bad snow, leaves on the line, sunspots and other events that could not possibly have been foreseen, are doing themselves and this House a disservice. We must recognise that these are political issues that have to be handled in a political fashion.
	I recognise that we have an economic interest in the well-being of the eurozone, but the Liberal position seems to be that because this is a political construct they wish to support, we have to keep shovelling in money regardless of how much it costs. I agree with those who say that we have spent enough and we must spend no more. I certainly agree with the position of the previous speaker, who seemed to be saying that we are looking for great things from this Government in terms of freezing or reducing the overall level of the EU budget. This debate should be a prelude to that argument that we must have. We should be taking a robust and vigorous line on this, in order to ensure that there are no concessions on the EU budget.
	I will vote with whoever I think is most extreme on this matter. It seems to me that that is the only way we can gain Europe’s attention. Simply threatening to stamp our feet and indicate our displeasure will be brushed aside, as will simply acquiescing in the Government Whips’ bidding. This is an issue on which we must vote extremist, so that the UK Independence party does not come and get many of the Members on the Government Benches.

Michael Connarty: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), because he talked about something that should be discussed more in this place: the plight of the people who are suffering problems because of their own Government’s mismanagement. My Eurosceptic colleagues
	on the Labour Benches are still against the common market—they are not really against the European Union as such—whereas the Eurosceptics on the Government Benches are, honourably, against the EU as a project. As they know, the problem I have with this whole debate is that all these manifestations have nothing to do with our being in the eurozone; they are to do with the failure of Governments to use the money that they had available, their own economic powers and the money made available to them by the EU in their period of transition into the EU to do the right things and invest correctly in the skills of their people and in the supply side of their economy, rather than spending the money on large economic projects.
	For example, when we go on a cheap holiday to Portugal we can drive on excellent motorways directly from the airport to the place where we will lie in the sun, and the hotels and large boulevards will have been paid for by EU money. However, the young people of that country fail to get a decent education, proper skills and university places. The reality of these countries is that they have under-invested in their own people. That criticism cannot be levelled at the UK.
	The eurozone offers these countries a way out of their dilemma that, as a socialist, I do not particularly find attractive; they will be asked to cut further their budgets, which should be being invested in their social infrastructure and the supply side of their economy. That will cause them great harm, but that offer will be made to them by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and so on because it is the capitalist model. That model says, “When you are in trouble, slash your budgets in the public sector.” Now, where have I heard that before? I have heard it from those on the Government Front Bench and from every Government Back Bencher. They have been told that every time they get up they should use the mantra about how they have to slash and burn the economy of this country—thus denying the young people of this country the chance to look for a better future—because of the problem of debt.
	That situation will be the consequence for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. It is what is happening in Ireland, and the young people in Spain are worried that it will happen to them. That country is a good example of a place where major infrastructure projects have been financed by the EU and the supply side of the economy has been run down. I have met many young people in Spain who say, “It was easy to leave school at 16 and get a job building houses, but nobody can afford to buy them now. It was good money, the sun was shining and everything was going to be fine.” Suddenly, these people find that they have no skills, no jobs and no future.

Claire Perry: I speak with some trepidation from the depths of the Maastricht maestros on the Government Benches. If I may echo the point
	made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), it is a tribute to many people, surrounding me today and not in the House, that we are no longer part of the euro and that we have been able to establish a healthy Euroscepticism both in opposition and since we came into government.
	Let me go back in history to see how we reached this sorry state of affairs. Many Members will remember the debates around the time of the Nice treaty in 2001. Indeed, there are Ministers on our Benches today who urged the Government of the time in the strongest possible terms not to sign up to the treaty as they believed it would give away any future veto on bail-out mechanisms. We were assured at that time by the then Minister for Europe that article 103 made it clear that there would be no bailing out of member states, whether that meant Britain or any other member state. I question whether the Minister for Europe at that point knew what was being done.
	In May 2010, the acting Chancellor of the Exchequer signed Britain’s commitment to the temporary European financial stability mechanism. Our total commitment is 12.5% of the putative total of €60 billion—€7.5 billion, a substantial sum. Later, I shall address what that means for hard-pressed British taxpayers. First, let me move the timeline further forward one step to December 2010. As has been said several times, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed that Britain would play no further role in a permanent European bail-out facility and also fought for and had implemented a number of stringent requirements for draw-downs from the existing facility.
	What will this facility cost the taxpayer? As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) said earlier, it is a contingent liability. A number of things must happen before there is any cash bail-out. The entire thing has to go belly up and the countries all have to default. Given that our ranking on this debt is pari passu with the facilities put in place by the IMF, we will have a superior credit position and will be paid out to first in the unlikely event that there is a partial or full default. It is not a gift or a grant but a contingent liability of €7.5 billion, of which approximately €1.2 billion has been put into the facility to date. The suggestions we often hear from Members on the Government Benches that hard-pressed taxpayers will see further cuts to public services or will not see the schools, hospitals or road repairs that they have been promised are simply fiction. It is not the case.
	This amount is a proportion of the EU budget and the budget is agreed for this year, so the liability is capped at this level. There is no further liability under the facility. What is the “so what” of this point? It is my belief that the action of this Government’s Chancellor has stopped Britain further sleepwalking into handouts, bail-outs, gifts or grants to the European Union. This fund is a eurozone experiment about which we have many concerns and I share the concerns that have been eloquently raised by Government Members about the long-term future direction of countries that are hamstrung by the tightness of their currency conditions and the overall problems with their economies.
	A Conservative Chancellor argued for tough conditions and pari passu rating with IMF debt for this facility, the only facility in which we have involvement. If hon.
	Members consider the conditions under which a country can access the facility, they will see that extremely tight conditions must be met and plans must be made. Although the situation is not ideal, the Government have done far more than the previous Government to put a stop to such developments—in fact, they have done the opposite of what that Government did for 13 years. The point that has been made about fighting to ensure that there is equal draw-down from the facility is right and I believe that the amendment also calls for that.
	I urge Members on both sides of the House to stop this Eurosceptic scaremongering, to focus on the facts of the debate and to ensure that we collectively never again sign our country up to the sort of bail-out mechanisms and removal of vetoes with which the previous Government left us.

Mark Hoban: If my right hon. Friend will be patient with me, I want to respond to some of the important points raised by a number of Members who have contributed to the debate. If I have time at the end, I will take interventions.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood said that taxpayers had contributed £12.5 billion to bail out euro area states, but that is simply not the case. Let me explain why. The European Financial Stability Mechanism is funded by the European Commission borrowing from capital markets, and it is only in the event that a beneficiary member state defaults that the EU budget, and so the UK, will be called upon to contribute. The UK does not fund the EFSM, which is a contingent liability. Not a single pound of taxpayers’ money has gone into the EFSM. On Ireland, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) has said, we have made a loan, not a gift or a grant, and we expect to get our money back. Not a penny of the money that we have saved through spending cuts has been used to make that loan.
	Let me go back to the events of a year ago. Europe faced a crisis, with concerns about the stability of Greece, and in the May ECOFIN meeting the EFSM and the EFSF were created. They were created at the height of the Greek crisis, in exceptionally turbulent conditions, before the Government took office. Markets were increasingly questioning the EU’s response to the situation. Indeed, there were fears about the stability of the entire euro area and the risk of contagion was real and dangerous. European Finance Ministers decided to create a broader package to restore confidence and stability. ECOFIN agreed to establish the EFSM and at the same time euro area Finance Ministers agreed to create the much bigger EFSF, which is backed entirely by euro area countries and does not create any liability for the UK.
	It is worth reminding hon. Members that, although the Greek crisis triggered the creation of the new mechanism, the EFSM was not used by Greece. The Greek rescue package was financed by the IMF and a series of bilateral loans between individual euro area member states and the Greek Government.
	The EFSM was agreed at ECOFIN by qualified majority voting and before this Government took office, and Cabinet Office protocol was followed throughout. At the time, in a conversation with his predecessor, the current Chancellor made his views on the EFSM clear and cautioned against committing the UK to proposals that would have a lasting effect on the UK’s public finances. Members need not take my words for it; the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) gave his recollection of the conversation to the House on 15 December 2010:
	“I discussed with the Chancellor what we should do about the financial stability mechanism. He had his reservations and stated very clearly that he was against deploying it”.—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 954.]
	That exactly matches the account given by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

Mark Hoban: No. As I said earlier, I want to make some progress on the matter.
	My right hon. Friend was also clear that, in the days prior to the formation of the coalition, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West was still the Chancellor
	of the Exchequer, representing the UK in a dynamic negotiating environment, and it was for him to reach that decision.
	The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) quoted an extract from an explanatory memorandum, and yes there was consensus between the parties about the process, but not about the outcome—as the former Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in his statement to the House in December. It was a matter for the previous Chancellor to decide, and he was the man occupying the office at the time.
	Some of my hon. Friends have today articulated concerns about the use of article 122. The EFSN was created following agreement by a qualified majority of member states at the ECOFIN meeting on 9 May 2010, and the terms of the mechanism are set out in an EU Council regulation. It is based on article 122 and states:
	“Where a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional circumstances beyond its control, the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, may grant, under certain conditions, Community financial assistance to the Member State concerned.”
	The Council decided that in those circumstances those criteria applied.
	Several hon. Members have raised the issue of article 125 of the treaty, the so-called “no bail-out” clause, but article 125 does not preclude member states from providing loans to one another, and, as evidence of that, the EU’s balance of payments facility has already provided medium-term financial assistance to a number of member states.
	Over the past year, we have had to deal with the legacy that we inherited from the previous Government and the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, but we have made sure that the permanent arrangements to sort out the euro area are the ultimate responsibility of euro area member states.
	My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made that his goal at last December’s European Council, where he secured two significant victories for the UK. First, he made sure that article 122 could not be used for euro area bail-outs in the future. Secondly, he ensured that the UK would not have to contribute to the European stabilisation mechanism, the permanent mechanism that will replace the ESFN and the EFSF. As the Prime Minister said, we have a good “belt and braces” approach—a no need, no use approach.

Anna Soubry: I am exceptionally grateful to you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I have perhaps rather better news—it is at least different news—than what we heard in the previous speech. I would like to talk briefly about the outstanding work of magistrates and the invaluable role that they play in the criminal justice system.
	Magistrates were created some 650 years ago—we are talking about a very long-standing office—and they are to be congratulated, as I am sure we would all agree. There are now 29,000 magistrates in England and Wales. Their minimum requirement is to sit for 26 half-days a year. Some 98% of all legal proceedings are conducted in magistrates courts, which perhaps puts into perspective the outstanding contribution that they regularly make to the justice system. Magistrates bring to bear their considerable experience, knowledge and wisdom to both criminal and family matters. It is perhaps a testament to their ability to dispense justice fairly and properly that they are so rarely challenged in any higher place. In the last 650 years, magistrates have faced many changes and challenges. Their outstanding chairman, Mr John Thornhill, whom I spoke to today, has told me that, notwithstanding all the changes, magistrates always bounce back.

Anna Soubry: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. I am sure that everyone in this place would join me in congratulating him and his wife, who is sitting up in the Gallery, on celebrating their 25th—their silver—wedding anniversary.
	Moving swiftly on to the important point that my hon. Friend makes, our magistrates are indeed volunteers. They receive a small subsistence allowance. I am sure that, like my hon. Friend, many hon. Members will have received letters and e-mails from magistrates in their constituencies who are concerned about plans to reduce their daily allowance and cut back their mileage allowance.

Anna Soubry: I take my hon. Friend’s point, and I am grateful for it. I would counter it, however, by saying that those of us who are familiar with the Crown courts will know that defendants and witnesses who appear in them make the effort and appear there without too much difficulty. I struggle to see how there will be much difference when a defendant or witness has to travel to a magistrates court that is further away following the closure of a more local one.
	There are many myths surrounding our lay magistrates. The days of the stereotype of the middle-aged lady—not that there is anything wrong with middle-aged ladies—are long gone. The days are gone when women of a certain age and from a certain social class dispensed justice, usually wearing a hat—not that there is anything wrong with hats, I must also swiftly add. We now see magistrates drawn from all walks of life, and rightly so. Their experience and knowledge is also often brought to bear in the Crown court, when they sit with a Crown court judge to decide appeals. They perform an invaluable role there.
	I have only one complaint, and I am grateful to my constituent, Mr Roy Plumb, in this regard. He lives in Kimberley, and he served as a magistrate for many years. He performed the role admirably. However, at the age of 70, he was forced to retire. The irony of the situation is that he was born on the very same day in the very same ward of the very same hospital as our esteemed Lord Chancellor. It is somewhat ironic that, while our Lord Chancellor was being appointed to his role, in which I hope he serves for many years, Mr Plumb was being forced to retire, as are other magistrates who reach their 70th birthday.
	I am against ageism—of course, I would say that as I get older. It is wrong to assume that, just because someone is of a certain age, they will perform in a certain way. Just because someone who is under 30 is appointed to serve as a lay magistrate, which Governments of all persuasions have sought to encourage, it does not mean that they will necessarily bring to the bench more youthful ideas or be able to identify more closely with
	young people. I subscribe to the notion that it does not matter what it says on someone’s birth certificate; the test is whether they are young at heart and fit in mind, and whether they have all the faculties to exercise sound judgment.
	I know that the last Government were questioned by people of all political persuasions—this is not an issue of party politics—on whether magistrates should have to retire at 70. Crown court judges can often sit until they are 73 and I believe High Court judges do not have to retire until they are 75, or at least they can sit in court until that age. I would suggest that this seems a little unfair to magistrates, especially, as I say, with our great Lord Chancellor being able to continue to serve for many years to come.
	I am sure that all would agree with me in celebrating and thanking our lay magistrates. I urge the Government to view ageism as a thing of the past, so that our magistrates should not have to retire at 70. Mr Plumb might be able to return to the bench. We should certainly give great credit to his campaign and wish it well for the future.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Alistair Burt: May I give the idea some thought? I must reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the United States is clearly engaged in the situation, as are the rest of us, but the point is that the GCC and its general secretary came so close, and we should back them. The President of Yemen was almost there, and the signature was almost on the document. We believe that that is the best hope.
	All the other parties seem to agree that the transitional process, which could be put in place by signing the document, allows for a 90-day transition period and offers guarantees to the family of Ali Abdullah Saleh, is the best hope for the future. It is also the President’s best hope and the best hope for the peace in the region. We are worried about reports that armed tribes are going into the capital, because that increases the risk of confrontation between the various bodies. The situation is absolutely immediate; it is ongoing as we speak.
	The right hon. Gentleman was correct also to talk of the atrocious pressure put on ambassadors on Sunday, when the United Arab Emirates embassy was surrounded in a clear attempt to intimidate people and to prevent the President from signing.
	So, we know where we are, and on the subject of the envoy the House should trust us. We are already heavily engaged, and our ambassadors to Yemen have repeatedly played a major role in working with others. For the time being, we will get behind the GCC and work with it to achieve a signing. We will continue to play a very important role, and I will continue to bring the House up to date as often as possible—and as needed. We all hope that sooner or later the saga will end, particularly for the good of the people of Yemen, who deserve to have the matter brought to a conclusion so that their country can enter a new chapter. If the President, by his own actions, leads a peaceful transition, he will have been of great service to his country at this time.
	I turn briefly to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, who rightly raised the difficulties of Christians in Iran and will have spoken for a variety of other minorities. We remain very concerned about the treatment of Christians and several other minorities—religious, ethnic and linguistic—in Iran. The ongoing systematic persecution of minorities contravenes all Iran’s most basic obligations to international human rights standards, and it deprives thousands of the chance to practise their faith without hindrance or fear.
	I commend to the House the publication by Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2011”, which is the latest edition, in which there is good information about the
	human rights records of many countries. In that aspect of the regime, as in so many others, Iran makes depressing reading. The report states:
	“Authorities announced that security forces had arrested more than 6,000 individuals after”—
	the disputed elections of—
	“June 2009. Hundreds—including lawyers, rights defenders, journalists, civil society activists, and opposition leaders—remain in detention without charge.”
	The list of executions is longer than any other country’s except China’s.
	Christians, as my hon. Friend said, are a minority protected by law in Iran, and in bilateral meetings in Tehran and in London we repeatedly call on Iran to respect the rights of all who choose their own faith and method of worship. We have also worked with our EU partners and through the UN to highlight those issues for the wider international community and to put pressure on Iran to fulfil its obligations to the Iranian people. We are aware of unconfirmed reports of the burning of Bibles in Iran. The UK wholly condemns the desecration of any spiritual or religious artefacts or symbols of faith, including scriptures. Given that Iran heavily criticised Terry Jones, the American pastor who planned to burn the Koran last year, we call on the Iranian Government to end the hypocrisy and religious intolerance.
	The demanding of large bails in Iran is sadly a common problem shared by all who feel the persecution of the system, which is designed to put on pressure. We are aware of those mentioned by my hon. Friend who were victims of the round-up and the crackdown on house churches after Christmas last year. That increased policy of detention continues to be a cause of great concern. Although we understand that the majority of those detained have been released, a number remain in custody, and we continue to believe that there were no legal or moral grounds for their initial detention—a point that we have made repeatedly to the Iranian authorities. Such intimidation on the grounds of faith and practice of worship should stop immediately. We call on Iran to allow all members of all faiths freely to participate in open worship.
	We continue to work for the betterment of the human rights situation through international institutions. The EU recently agreed to sanction Iranian individuals for human rights abuses, and the UN Human Rights Council voted at the end of March to install a special rapporteur to report on the human rights situation in Iran and to make thorough recommendations to the Iranian authorities, the Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council.
	The comments by my hon. Friend and the case histories that he has dealt with sadly give the lie to the Iranian regime’s claim to be the voice of a republic with moral underpinning. Hypocritical in its support of protests elsewhere and condemned by its execution policy, the regime remains a sad disappointment to millions of good Muslims everywhere and, in particular, to the Iranian people, who deserve rather better.

Eric Joyce: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will be very brief and make just one or two points. I can either speak very quickly or stick to the quality.
	I want to speak about social media and the issues that have arisen in the past couple of days. Yesterday, the Attorney-General general said in answer to a question from my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Justice that he would create a Committee. I presume that that would be a Committee of both Houses involving cross-party membership, but I am not yet sure how it is going to be put together. So far, the debate has had two primary variables at its heart. On the one hand, there has been the legal side, with much discussion among the usual lawyers. In fact, as far as I can see, there are only three or four lawyers in England, because they keep appearing on Channel 4 News, Newsnight and every other news programme. I will not name them, because that is not in vogue at the moment. I do not dispute that the law is a very important dimension. The other dimension is privacy, which people feel variously about. I know that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends are concerned about issues relating to a certain newspaper empire. To be honest, I have lesser, or different, concerns.
	Both aspects are important, but what has not been aired is the issue of technology. At the moment, the court and legal system—and, indeed, Parliament—is finding itself in a tricky position over privacy, injunctions and so forth because of the way that technology is racing ahead through social media applications such as Twitter, Facebook and many other platforms; I will not run through an advertisement for all the rivals. The fact is that they exist and that there is the potential for information to circulate with astonishing speed. As the Attorney-General and my right hon. Friend the shadow Justice Secretary said yesterday, it would be wrong for us in this place to say, “That’s the law, it can’t be enforced, so we just ignore it.”
	Lord Neuberger’s report, which seemed a pretty reasonable effort, revealed some of the difficulties. Post that report, in the past couple of days, the Lord Chief Justice has tried to create some balance and reflected on the fact that some of the stuff that is said on the social media is taken pretty lightly. People gossip on the high street and at work, and that can sometimes have implications. Although I am not a lawyer, I understand that such gossip can have a legal status so that someone who took part could technically be taken to the civil courts for slander or, if they wrote it down, for libel. Social media merely—I say “merely”, but I know that there are significant implications—transfer that to the internet. One thing that the Lord Chief Justice said—I like to call him Judge Judge, because it is a great name, like the one in “Catch-22”—was that it is a simple fact that people do not give as much weight to information that they see on Twitter or wherever, because often it is wrong. It is patently obvious from recent cases in the media that some of the names that have come out have been wrong.
	We might be tempted to say that one just has to accept that this is gossip on the internet, that that is life, and that there is nothing that the law can do about it. However, as the Attorney-General said yesterday, we cannot do that. There are many instances in which we
	could say that one should just accept that because we cannot implement a particular law in every case, it is not worth having. However, that is not a general position that we accept. We know that we cannot prosecute everyone who ever commits a crime. Nevertheless, it is important that the principle is there.
	The argument about emerging technologies and what will come next is terribly important. I sat on the Standing Committee that considered the Communications Act 2003, which was the original Ofcom legislation. More recently, I took part in the debate in the House on the Digital Economy Act 2010. It is clear that it is difficult to legislate for new and emerging technologies, because one does not have the foggiest idea what will come next. Twitter is only two or three years old. We have no idea what there will be two or three years down the line. It is difficult to legislate for, or to take into account in the current debate, what will happen two or three years down the line. I want to emphasise that point, I hope it will be taken up by the Joint Committee when it comes into being and considers its position.
	When I and other people say that we have to reflect on what is possible, we are not negating the actuality that there have to be laws under which people can be pursued if there is a particularly bad breach of an injunction, or whatever. The fact is that it is enormously difficult to close the stable door once the horse has bolted. That is not a statement of hopelessness. We have to think not just about Twitter, although that is what most of the debate has been about, but about the emerging technologies just down the road—there are many and I could bang on about them at great length, but I will not because my time is almost up—and they will inevitably impact on the deliberations of the Joint Committee and on the further discussions that will no doubt take place in this House.

Tony Lloyd: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett), who takes great pride in his suburb. In the same way, people in Manchester have enormous pride in what our city is all about. That is why I wanted to raise two important local issues today.
	First, the Edale unit, which is a secure mental health unit, is currently located in the central Manchester hospital. Manchester Mental Health and Social Care trust specifically had the unit designed only a few years ago as part of a private finance initiative in that hospital. The strategic health authority gifted the trust some £16 million for the project, but only four years on, the trust has decided that it wants to abandon the unit and move its facilities elsewhere.
	The trust proposes to move the unit to Park House—the site of the North Manchester hospital. By all accounts, that decision is perplexing. Patients, user groups, families and those involved in mental health delivery tell me that the facilities in Park House are less adequate than those in the Edale unit, particularly because the new facility will have mixed-sex wards and the accommodation will be dormitory-style, with six beds to a unit, and therefore less secure. Because the therapy provision in Park House is worse than that in the Edale unit, those people, who have very serious mental health conditions, will receive inferior treatment.
	Three options were examined and appraised before the change was announced, and the move to Park House was judged to be the worst of them. In health terms, therefore, the decision is perplexing, but it might be explicable if it saves the mental health trust £1.7 million a year, as the trust says it will. Money could drive the trust’s decision because of the cost pressures in the NHS, but the decision is still unacceptable, because although the move saves the mental health trust £1.7 million a year, it will cost the wider NHS economy an extra £1.9 million a year. The economics therefore do not add up. It might be good for the bookkeeping of the mental health trust, but it is bad for the health economy.
	The difficulty I have had throughout the process is that both the mental health trust and the SHA have not been open with the public. All Members of the House would regard that situation as unacceptable. Bureaucrats cannot hide important decisions behind faceless decision-making processes. No Member of Parliament would accept that for their community, and I certainly do not accept it for mine. People in my community suffer from extraordinarily high levels of mental illness, and we need the provision of a facility that is in keeping with the very best, and not simply with the second-best, as driven by narrow financial needs.
	I have asked to meet the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), and I hope that happens before final decisions are made. However, I want to emphasise that the process has been inadequate and unacceptable to local people.
	The second issue is on another, very different, NHS facility: the Ancoats walk-in centre. Hon. Members often use superlatives, but my constituents in that area have some of the worst health of any people anywhere in the country. The area needs first-class health facilities. The walk-in centre was finally delivered to the Ancoats community when the former Ancoats hospital closed,
	which was quite a number of years ago now. There was a commitment to making health provision available for the non-chronic conditions that are so common in such areas. The health planners now intend to close this facility, thereby breaking the promise made when the Ancoats health facility was closed. That is particularly galling because the decisions were made long before any public consultation. I have a copy of the in-house magazine in February telling staff that the decision to close had been taken, yet the public consultation only began last week, on 16 May. That is unacceptable.
	I repeat that the people in the Ancoats area have some of the worst health indicators not just in Manchester but across the country. The proposed relocated unit—in fact, they are closing the unit and claiming it is a relocation—is more than four miles away, which, for people with no access to a car or other private transport, means a journey by public transport or walking. However, of the three bus services available, one requires an 18-minute walk and the other two require bus changes. For those who need health care they can walk to, which they have come to expect in recent years, the alternative unit simply is not adequate. I appeal to the Minister to tell Health Ministers that bureaucrats cannot do this to communities. Bureaucrats need to answer properly to communities.

Jonathan Lord: In the Backbench Business debate before the Christmas recess, I spoke about magistrates court closures, and about how the Government, instead of following their localism agenda, were unjustly moving services away from some local communities in the name of efficiency and effectiveness. I firmly believe that delivering services locally can enhance efficiency and effectiveness rather than being their antithesis. So, as the Government, the regions, and those who commission and provide health services grapple with difficult budgets and soaring demands, I urge the Government, and particularly the key health stakeholders in my county of Surrey, really to think through how
	community hospitals could help to deliver improved health care at a local and accessible level and in a cost-efficient way.
	My constituents in Woking, Pirbright and Normandy are generally well served when they travel out to the two acute hospitals located on either side of the constituency—St Peter’s in Ashford and the Royal Surrey in Guildford—but I am particularly fortunate to have Woking community hospital at the very heart of my constituency. It is an excellent local facility, receiving 110,000 visits each year. It provides assessment and rehabilitation, audiology, ophthalmology, physiotherapy and X-rays, and the nationally respected Bradley unit offers a neuro-rehabilitation service for patients with multiple sclerosis and other disorders.
	The doctors, nurses and staff are incredibly dedicated, and the hospital is also supported by the Friends of Woking Community Hospital, whose 350 members have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund additional improvements and projects. These have included diagnostic equipment for the early detection of glaucoma, electronically operated beds and the construction of two conservatories that provide patients with a quiet, light-filled space. They even provide newspapers for long-stay patients of the Bradley neuro-rehabilitation ward. A major legacy has recently been bequeathed by Sir Alec Bedser, a long-term Woking resident, and I am sure his generosity will be put to good use. This amazing level of dedication and support is difficult, though not impossible, to replicate at the larger institutions and provides a real catalyst for future success.
	I would argue that community hospitals such as the one in Woking that already have a certain size and critical mass and already have the experience, the space, the good buildings and infrastructure to offer a broad range of services to a reasonably large local population—even though they are not immediately adjacent to a main acute hospital—have enormous potential to expand their existing offerings and deliver excellent health care right in the heart of their communities.
	What I am championing is the idea of a lead or a hub community hospital that offers a wider range of truly local health care, which could help to take some of the pressure off our over-burdened acute hospitals. For example, with the right medical staff on hand and good co-ordination with the ambulance service, most low-acuity ambulance calls could be dealt with at hub community hospitals. There could be an extension of medical cover at the hubs, including into the evenings and weekends, so that a wider range of sicker patients could be seen there. What about a rapid access centre, where a consultant would see and assess elderly people within one or two days to save them being sent to A and E or a busy acute hospital? Perhaps there is scope at one or two of our larger community hospitals for a temporary intoxication and related minor injuries unit. I believe that community health services can play a leading role in developing home nursing services to complement local hospitals so that patients can be released quicker to be supported at home, thus releasing hospital beds for new patients.
	To its credit, NHS Surrey has carried out discussions about the future for community health. Let us be clear, however: over the next few weeks or months, I would like to see three things. First, I want a firm commitment that Woking community hospital will be a lead or hub hospital, albeit initially on a pilot basis. Secondly, I
	want some details on the service provision that is going to be enhanced and how it can be integrated with other local services. Finally, I want a commitment to funding that recognises the important future role that community health services and key community hospitals should have in Surrey.
	The Government have increased the primary care trust’s baseline budget by over £30 million for this year, so the plan to reduce spending on community health services by 1.5% is worrying and difficult to justify. I believe that moving more activity to community settings has a major role to play in the future clinical and financial sustainability of the Surrey health system—a view that seems to be shared by NHS Surrey—but the rhetoric about treating more patients in the community must be backed by action and by funding.
	In the Woking community hospital, I have a very fine local facility. I want to see it enhanced over the coming years and I believe that NHS Surrey should support me in that endeavour. I believe that the Government and health authorities generally should also look at supporting community health right in the heart of their communities.

Justin Tomlinson: Working with the British Heart Foundation as part of the Heartstart UK campaign, I am calling for every child in the UK to
	be taught extended life support, so that when they leave school they are capable of saving a life. I want every child, and eventually every adult, in the UK to be able to do the following: recognise an emergency; contact the ambulance service immediately; administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation; and use an automated defibrillator. This campaign has received overwhelming support from across the medical, teaching and charitable communities, including from the following organisations: the British Medical Association, Research Councils UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Nursing, the Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee, the PSHE Association, SAD.org.uk, and Cardiac Risk in the Young—CRY.
	I am passionate about the issue of extended life support—ELS—because as a teenager I found my father following his heart attack, so I know just how essential it is to have these skills. I am far from alone, as there are 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year. Currently, only about one in 12 sufferers will survive; that means 27,500 people are dying in the community, some of whom could have been saved. On average, it takes about six to 12 minutes for an emergency ambulance to reach a critically ill patient. For every minute that passes in cardiac arrest, the patient’s chance of survival falls by 10%. However, if immediate CPR—cardiopulmonary resuscitation—is given, survival rates increase threefold.
	The great shame is that most people are simply not able to help individuals in cardiac arrest. All too often, passers-by simply hope that someone else will act. By training and educating individuals we can radically alter this situation. I have heard horrific stories of crowds gathering around with no one willing to step in. Thankfully, the evidence clearly shows that with training, lay people can overcome the psychological barriers and manage the patient until more advanced and experienced personnel arrive.
	What I am asking for will take only 0.2% of the school year. It takes less than two hours to fully train a young person in ELS; that is the equivalent of just one physical education lesson. The training is straightforward. At the recent meeting of the all-party group on heart disease, even I managed to breeze through it, as did my staff. The training can be broken into three levels, and even the most basic form of training can make a difference. For example, the body has enough oxygen in the blood so that even basic-compression CPR would be sufficient for 15 minutes, which is longer than the average ambulance response time. These skills will remain with people for the rest of their lives. We will instantly create a new generation of life savers, and they can pass their skills on, so it is a win-win situation. We have the evidence that this will work. It will allow us to change the prognosis for this devastating condition, saving thousands of lives a year.
	My request is not new. Norway, Denmark and France already have this as part of their national curricula. Also, the American Heart Association has decreed that no child who is non-proficient in CPR should be able to graduate from secondary school. The British Heart Foundation already has more than 900 schools actively engaged in the Heartstart campaign, helping train thousands of children in these essential skills. This campaign needs to be extended to every school, and with that in mind I have already met Dr Peter Crouch of the Taw Hill
	medical practice, and Swindon borough council, to look at ways to ensure that it is extended to all the schools in my North Swindon constituency. I urge all MPs to do the same.

Stephen Gilbert: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is not the only one who has difficulty protecting his local heritage. We have that difficulty in rural areas too. Indeed, I rise tonight to express the deep anger, disappointment and dismay across my constituency that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has approved a mass burn incinerator for the village of St Dennis in the heart of the constituency.
	There is anger because a Government who make much of their localism agenda have overruled the wishes of the local parish council, the former district council and the former county council’s planning committee, and ignored representations from Cornwall’s six MPs. There is disappointment because the Government have fundamentally undermined their claims to be the greenest Government ever. There is dismay because the incinerator is the wrong solution to Cornwall’s waste problems and might dominate the small village of St Dennis for four decades to come.
	Let me put the incinerator in context. At 120 metres, its stack is twice the height of this building’s famous Clock Tower, which houses Big Ben, and taller than the Statue of Liberty. It will dominate a small Cornish village and will be seen from many of Cornwall’s beauty spots. As we enter an era of global warming, Cornwall’s incinerator will belch out thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions and other harmful particulates.
	We know that inefficient incineration, in which the energy is not used, does not move waste up the waste hierarchy. It remains a disposal in the same category as landfill. It is therefore out of step with Government policy, but that is what is happening in Cornwall, and that is what the Secretary of State has approved. The incinerator will generate more than 200 extra fuel-guzzling lorry movements on Cornwall’s lanes and roads each and every day. It will depress reuse and recycling rates. Incineration has never been the right solution for Cornwall, only the quick fix for a council caught in a blind panic.
	The difficult circumstances in St Dennis mask the great strength of the people. They have put up a tremendous fight against the plans in what has always been a David and Goliath situation. They are not nimbys and since 2005 they have only ever wanted a modern solution to a modern problem. They have fought with only half the information that other sides in the dispute have.
	May I ask the my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House directly whether waste private finance initiative contracts and the potential liabilities to which they expose local authorities will now be material considerations in planning policy, as the inspector’s report suggests? Does that not fundamentally undermine the plan-led approach that the Government want to adopt? How can development be plan-led if local people who have no control over the contracts signed by a local authority will always be trumped by the provisions of that contract? How can it be right for a document for use in a public inquiry to be redacted? There should be no document needed for a public inquiry that is not available in full to all participants. I would appreciate it if my hon. Friend would ask his colleagues in the Department to write to me on those points.
	The community in mid-Cornwall is angry. Our faith in the democratic process has been shaken to its core. How can it be, when we have won our case every time we have put it to local decision makers, that our Secretary of State, who is responsible for localism, has overruled the local decision makers whom he says that he seeks to empower? There is no doubt that Friday was a sad day for democracy in Cornwall, for Cornwall’s beautiful environment, and for future generations who will look back, bemused, at the folly that has been imposed on them.

Jack Lopresti: I, too, would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I apologise to any Members who were present when I spoke in the pre-recess debate last month, as I must return to the issue of antisocial behaviour which I raised on that occasion. After I last spoke on the topic, I received a full and considered response from the Minister with responsibility for crime prevention, for which I thank him. I am glad that he agreed that much of what is described as anti-social behaviour is actually crime, and that it has a huge impact on the quality of life of millions of decent people. The Government are on the right track in recognising that the current measures for dealing with antisocial behaviour are bureaucratic and ineffective and that the solution lies in giving the police and local agencies more effective powers to deal with the problem at a much more local level.
	I am saddened to report to the House that the constituents I mentioned in my last speech on this topic are still suffering at the hands of a few thugs who believe that they can do as they please and that they are above the law in waging their campaigns of intimidation and abuse. Just last week a crowd of about 20 were involved in intimidating a resident who said, “I have lived here all my life and this has got to stop!” The crowd followed my constituent down the road to his home where more youths arrived in two cars. Neighbours called the police who, instead of dispersing the crowd or, heaven forbid, making arrests for disturbance of the peace at the very least, simply chatted with the crowd in a manner that my constituent described as jolly and friendly. My constituent reported the matter to the district chief superintendent, who replied that he had asked a colleague to respond, but no response has been received so far. I am hopeful that when a copy of Hansard arrives on his desk, sent from my office, the response will be forthcoming more quickly.
	I look forward to the Home Office’s response to the public consultation, but in the interim I expect the local police and local agencies to make full use of the current powers for tackling antisocial behaviour and to offer the most effective means available of protecting victims and communities. It is easy to see why there is a perception in some quarters that nothing can be done about this sort of crime, but something can be done, as it was done in New York by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In one of the most crime-infested cities in the world, he achieved real success. He realised:
	“Reducing the number of crimes wouldn’t be enough: people had to see improvement, not just hear about it. If crime went down but the existing amount of pushing and shoving, urinating on the streets, and other quality-of-life issues remained the same, we would never have a convincing case that life was better. We had to get people to be safe and to feel safe.”
	When people feel safe, antisocial behaviour will not be tolerated by the community. Only when the local police achieve that will we see the trends of antisocial behaviour begin to reverse. I have more to say but I know we are stuck for time so I shall finish.

Thomas Docherty: I begin with the case of Ian Elam of Dunfermline, who is the sole carer for his wife, Jeanie, and has looked after her for about 10 years without any respite. She suffers from multiple sclerosis and requires 24-hour care. At the end of 2009, Mr Elam was persuaded by Fife council social workers to make use of a respite opportunity, and his wife entered respite care at Queen Margaret hospital. Regrettably, the staff could not cope with Mrs Elam, and her husband had to attend to her needs for about 12 hours per day during her stay, which continued until February 2010.
	Unfortunately, the Department for Work and Pensions has decided that Mr Elam should lose many of the benefits that he receives during his respite from caring. I am sure the House will be surprised to learn that, when people who provide 24-hour care take a short period of respite, they lose all their benefits. After all, no one in this House or, indeed, in the Press Gallery would expect to take unpaid holiday. I should be grateful, therefore, if the Deputy Leader of the House could make some inquiries about the state of the case and report back to me at a later date.
	It is fitting that I follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), as I too have a naval interest. Just this weekend, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who is responsible for defence procurement, wrote to many Members to inform them of the outcome of the Government’s strategic defence and security review and the refitting and basing of the surface and submarine fleets. Two Type 23 frigates, HMS Somerset and HMS Richmond, which had been scheduled for refitting at Rosyth dockyard, are now to be refitted at Devonport. I do not oppose the move, after all Devonport has a large
	hole in its order book thanks to the decisions of this Government, but there is uncertainty about the future of Rosyth dockyard.
	I am sure the Deputy Leader of the House is also aware of the ongoing uncertainties at DM Crombie, which faces an uncertain future when the last of the surface fleet is fitted out at Rosyth at the end of 2013, because there is a long gap until—I hope—the Queen Elizabeth class comes into service. I would therefore be grateful if the Deputy Leader of the House could ascertain whether the Minister would be prepared to meet me to discuss the long-term future of Rosyth and Crombie.
	In my maiden speech, I talked about Longannet power station, which is now the only bidder for the carbon capture and storage project. It has waited 12 months for a decision from this Government, and there does not appear to be one in sight. I would be grateful if the Deputy Leader of the House could update the House on what progress has been made on carbon capture and storage at Longannet and whether the relevant Minister of State would be prepared to meet me to discuss it.
	The House will recall that I have led the charge against ship-to-ship transfers taking place in the Firth of Forth. This decision lies with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning). I would be grateful if the Deputy Leader of the House could urge him to make a decision as speedily as possible when we come back after the recess, as the uncertainty is helping no one.

Bob Blackman: In the short time that I have, I wish to raise three specific issues.
	The first issue is the plight of the Ashiana charitable trust, which I was proud to give an award to last night at the national Kids Count awards. It enables disabled young people and people with learning difficulties to fulfil an active life, and entertains people throughout London and beyond. It is sad to report that Harrow council has decided to remove all funding from that organisation. That is a national scandal that I hope the council will change, even at this late stage.
	Secondly, I am a passionate about ensuring that there is growth in the private sector. I was therefore amazed to be told by a constituent who wants to set up a business in my constituency that he has attempted to register for VAT, and yet has been put on hold by the Treasury and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for 18 months. He would employ more than 10 people locally, and he has done the right thing in trying to register for VAT, but the answer that he has been given is that he should charge customers for VAT, retain the money and then hand it over to HMRC when he is finally given registration. He wishes to seek a business-to-business arrangement, but the other businesses require a VAT number before they will do business with him. He has been forced into a position where he cannot get premises and cannot buy vehicles, because he cannot afford to get the loan that is required until he is VAT registered. HMRC is acting as a direct obstacle to the setting up of that business in my constituency. I trust that we can see an end to that.
	The third plight that I will allude to briefly has been exposed nationally. My constituent, Yvonne Alpagot, came to see me about Brentsouth Trading Ltd, which operates out of a garage in Southall. I have also raised this matter with the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). My constituent found the website because she has a car with a Renault engine. The company purported to be expert in sorting out Renault engines, but she was scandalously treated. When she finally got to see her vehicle again, the engine had been removed
	and placed on the back seat, spilling oil all over the seat. The car had been damaged out of all proportion, and when she sought to recover the vehicle she was physically threatened by individuals in the company. She took them to court and won, but unfortunately they had closed the company just a week before she got to court.
	After doing some research, Yvonne Alpagot discovered that more than six companies were operating out of a single site, and curiously enough, each of them had a number of the same directors. She found that they had closed down companies and opened them again, leaving hundreds of customers high and dry. On many occasions, they had closed down companies with court judgments against them. That is a scandal, and it needs to be put right. We need to ensure that when companies close down and there are court judgments against their directors, those directors are not allowed to start up another company performing the same function on the same site. We need to rectify that scandal.
	I could go into great detail about that case, but I recognise that time is against me. What I seek, as I have said before at Question Time, is for such phoenix operations to be stopped in their tracks, so that innocent people who have no idea that those companies are trading illegally are not forced to pay thousands of pounds to companies that should not be operating in the first place.

David Heath: I noticed when I looked at the list of Members who were going to take part in the debate, and examined their background in “Dod’s”, that the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt)—I do not intend to embarrass her in any way—was once a magician’s assistant, which is perhaps not widely known. It seemed me that I needed at least a magician’s assistant to answer all the points that have been raised in the debate. As usual, I will not be able to do so adequately, and as usual I will ensure that the various Departments that are relevant to the points that have been made write to the Members concerned in due course.
	Let us canter through the 18 contributions to the debate. The hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who is not in his place at the moment, talked about the ongoing controversy about privacy and the difficulty of policing online social sites such as Twitter. He is absolutely right that it is very difficult, but that does not mean that there is no responsibility on either those sites or the people who use them to comply with the law. We have said previously, and I say again, that what is illegal offline is illegal online. The criminal law applies as much to those sites as it does to anyone else, and we look forward to the work of the Joint Committee that is being set up to examine those matters and the wider privacy and defamation issues.
	The hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) gave us a wonderful look at his constituency and explained the contribution that it could make to this country’s tourism industry. I have been a tourist in his constituency, so I feel rather superior. I took a weekend in north Kent recently, and I am familiar with Hall Place. What I did not know was that his constituency shares something with mine, because it contains an edifice that was built as penance for the murder of
	Thomas Becket. In fact, the entire village in which I live was built as penance by Henry II, so the hon. Gentleman and I have something in common.
	The hon. Gentleman made an important point about the capacity of our tourism, both internationally and within this country, and said that it was not just the obvious places that had something to offer. He was absolutely right, and I will ensure that he gets a full response in due course from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
	The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) raised two very important points as far as his constituents are concerned: the closures of Edale House and of the Ancoats centre. I am not clear on the extent to which those decisions are irrevocable, but it is essential that local people have a proper input into such key decisions on their health provision. That is the entire thrust of what the Government are trying to do. We want to ensure that decisions are not top-down edicts, but that they are taken on the basis of the advice of local clinicians and the local people involved. If the Government can assist in ensuring that those matters are discussed in the context of what is right for his constituency and the people whom he represents, I am sure we would be happy to do so.
	I shall leave the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) to one side for a moment, and address the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who spoke about the difficulties of the parking regime in Walsall. In fact, I was well aware of those problems, because I have been reading the correspondents’ pages in the Walsall Advertiser, which draw attention to exactly the point she raised. Of course, that is a local council issue, and there is a limit to what the Government can or would wish to do, because such matters are best decided at community level. However, clearly, she has taken the opportunity to represent the views of many of her constituents, and as I understand it, she will present a petition later, which will include the views of News and Booze, which I notice decries its name by selling choc bars and hair cuts. I am sure that she represents what a lot of people in her constituency think on the subject of parking in Walsall.
	I recall the contribution of the hon. Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) to a previous debate on courts. His remarks today on the importance of Woking community hospital were entirely consistent with that. He is working with the grain in this instance, because the indication is that it is felt that that hospital can play a leading role in providing health services in that part of the county of Surrey. I notice that the Surrey primary care trust has made that clear as part of its forward programme, but he is right to emphasise that local hospitals can do things that the big acute hospitals cannot do, and that they can act as a hub for provision. I am glad he took the opportunity to say that.
	The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) talked about fuel poverty. He may or may not know that that subject is dear to my heart and to the heart of the hon. Member for Southend West—he has previously presented legislation on fuel poverty, and I presented a Bill on fuel poverty in the last Session of the previous Parliament. I am afraid that my Bill foundered at the hands of the previous Government, who were not quite as keen on dealing effectively with fuel poverty as the
	hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent and I are. However, this Government are making real progress. The hon. Gentleman was right to talk about the impact of fuel poverty on communities such as the one he represents. One thing that pleases me about our proposals is that they deal not just with the houses that it is easy to deal with, but those that are more difficult to treat. Some of the residential stock of which he spoke—in Nantyglo, for instance—probably falls into the latter category. It is essential that we do not simply go for the low-hanging fruit and the easy pickings, but ensure that we extend defences against fuel poverty to all parts of our community. I applaud him for making those points.
	The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) spoke about emergency life-saving skills; that point has been raised several times recently. He is obviously right. It is essential that young people have the opportunity to learn those skills so that they can put them to good use at a later stage. I noticed that this point was raised in Education questions yesterday. I think the Secretary of State agreed that it needs to be addressed and that we need to ensure that young people have access to that information. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will continue his campaign, although whether the teaching of those skills should be a formal part of the national curriculum, or whether there are other ways of providing them in the school programme, is a moot point. However, it is clear that young people ought to have them in their skill range for when they leave school, so that they can use them when needed—and none of us ever knows when they will be needed.
	The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about heritage buildings in his constituency. I am getting to know his constituency rather better having had two of these debates with him. What has happened at Dower house, in particular, sounds very odd. I understand that it is still subject to a police investigation, so we shall see what happens with that in due course. He mentioned other buildings in his constituency that he felt were at risk, including the Harmondsworth great barn, the Golden crescent library and others. English Heritage has indicated to me that it would be happy to meet him and others in his constituency to discuss these issues. I will also extend that request to a Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to see whether we can arrange something. I know that the Department, English Heritage and the Crown Prosecution Service take heritage crime very seriously. It happens far too easily: an important building suddenly goes up in smoke, often following failed planning permission. We have got to stop that; we have got to take effective measures. I am sure he will find that he is speaking to people who agree with the basic principles he has outlined.
	My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) is clearly very upset with the decision taken on the incinerator at St Dennis. I cannot tell him anything about the decision-making process of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and nor should I say anything, because he will have acted in a quasi-judicial capacity when making that decision. However, I will ensure that the points my hon. Friend raised on behalf of his constituents are communicated to the Secretary of State. I do not know whether things have changed since I sat on an authority with responsibility for such matters, but I seem to remember that there was a two-stage process:
	planning permission followed by an operating licence. When granting an operating licence, further restrictions or conditions could be applied. I might be wrong, however. I will certainly ensure that his points are raised with the relevant Minister.
	The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) spoke about antisocial behaviour, which is the curse of many of our constituencies and causes much unhappiness for many of our constituents. He is right to raise it. I am pleased that he got a good reply from the Minister concerned when he raised it previously. It sounds like issues remain to be resolved in his constituency, however, and it would be sensible were he to raise them directly with Chief Constable Colin Port, because it is clear that he is not yet satisfied with the police response. It is for the chief constable to respond on those matters.
	The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) raised again the issue of private finance initiatives, on which he is fighting an excellent campaign. The key concern is value for money, yet it has become transparently obvious that many PFI schemes simply did not provide that. The Government are committed to ensuring that we get value for money whenever we enter a scheme of that kind. I know that he has had discussions—in fact, he mentioned them—with the Chancellor and the Commercial Secretary, and that he feels that real progress is being made. I hope that progress continues and we ensure that if we use that form of financing for public projects, it is not simply a way of getting the amounts involved off the balance sheet, but a way of ensuring that people have the services they need at a cost that is commensurate with their value. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will continue his campaign to achieve that.
	The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) is someone else whose constituency I feel I know much more about than I did a few weeks ago, having replied to a debate with him only recently. I know how important the Vestas investment in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey is to his constituents. He asked me a series of questions, but accepted that I would probably be unable to answer him. He is absolutely right—I cannot—but I will ensure that his questions are communicated to the relevant Minister. What I can say is that the Government are talking to Vestas about how to assist the investment that it is thinking of making. There is a problem, in that the £60 million is not available because Sheerness is not an assisted area. There are EU state aid rules and there are difficulties getting around them, but the Government are very keen on assisting the investment, as the hon. Gentleman is, and I hope we can do everything possible to make it a reality.
	The hon. Member for Portsmouth North talked about Portsmouth and the issues there. One thing that I had not known until I read the background notes to this debate is that Portsmouth is the most densely populated city outside inner London. Again, not many people know that. We need to ensure that development continues in Portsmouth. She raised the significant issue of the relationship with the Ministry of Defence, and how it might be brought on board with the local enterprise partnership and the other keys to growth in the area. If there is anything we can do to make that happen more effectively, that would make obvious sense for the interests of her constituents. I will draw the issue to the attention not only of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but of the MOD. Hopefully we can make
	progress. She would also like to talk to the Treasury about national insurance contributions relief, and I will pass on that request too.
	The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) raised a number of issues. I cannot give an answer to his point about his constituent Mr Elam and respite care, but I will ensure that the Department for Work and Pensions does. As for the shipyards in his constituency, I think he recognises the fact that not every refit can take place in Rosyth—some are taking place in Devonport—but there is work there that has been commissioned by this Government and that will continue, which is good news for Rosyth. As for Longannet, this is a key issue that Ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change have been directly involved in. He asked for the relevant Minister of State to visit his constituency. I am sure that the Minister concerned would very much like to do so if he could, but the Secretary of State and the permanent secretary both already have, so the hon. Gentleman has not been neglected.
	The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) talked about farming issues. He will celebrate, as I will on behalf of my constituents, today’s publication of the draft Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill. We are making real progress.
	The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) talked about various things. She was kind enough to say thank you to the Minister of State, Department for Transport for her work on rail services. She talked about Travellers’ sites, small businesses and sentences—issues that I know will continue to crop up. As far as hospitals are concerned, it is absolutely clear that the main thrust of the policy will survive whatever changes are made to the details.
	The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) talked about HMRC registration for VAT and a trust in his constituency, which are points that I am afraid I cannot answer in full.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) listed about 20 things in his speech, but I cannot talk about them now. Let me tell him, however, that I will spend the next couple of weeks writing to the relevant Departments about all those issues. Others will have other priorities, but I—
	Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Resolved,
	That this House concurs with the Lords Message of 23 May that, notwithstanding the resolution of this House of 15 March, it be an instruction to the Joint
	Committee on the Draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extension) Bills that it should report on the draft Bills by 23 June.—
	(Mr Goodwill.)

Mike Freer: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The expansion of the Hindu faith school somewhere between Barnet and Harrow would not only meet parental preference but relieve pressure on the remaining schools in the maintained sector.
	To return to the iniquity of the shortage of places and the capital funding allocation, that discrepancy between 64% of places and just 26% of funding means that London is short-changed by more £300 million in the existing allocation.
	The current shortage of primary places has been met by providing additional classrooms in portakabins, by changing information technology rooms and libraries into classrooms, or simply by making children travel much further to an available school space. That is not a sustainable solution.
	Things are no better in the secondary sector. The area is served by the Bishop Douglass mixed Roman Catholic comprehensive school, which is over-subscribed with 383 applications for 180 places, and by the Compton mixed comprehensive school, which is also over-subscribed—and every applicant from Finchley N2 was rejected; not a single pupil could get a place there. Mr Speaker went to the Compton school—or the Finchley Manorhill school, as it was then called—but he would not get in today, as he lived too far away from it. Then there is Christ’s college, a boys-only school—again
	over-subscribed, with 424 applications for 150 places. St. Michael’s Catholic grammar school for girls has 370 applications for just 96 places. We also have Henrietta Barnett, a highly selective girls school, grossly over-subscribed and with 2,000 applications for 180 places. Then we have Copthall, a girls comprehensive. It too is over-subscribed, and 100% of applicants from N2 were rejected simply because they lived too far away.
	In the past fortnight alone I have received 200 emails from worried parents. Let me report just some of what they have said. Mrs Catherine Atkinson wrote:
	“I have lived in East Finchley for 28 years. My son got into Fortismere by the skin of his teeth 8 years ago and I remember the stressful wait for the letter saying he had the place. Those not so lucky because they lived maybe 200 yards farther away from the school were offered either Bishop Douglass school or…Christ’s college.”
	That would more difficult today, because those schools too are over-subscribed and full.
	Mrs Carey wrote to me:
	“I live in Long Lane. My daughter is in year 5 and my son is in year 4. Our position is as follows: Fortismere—we’re not in catchment and are unable to afford property prices in Fortismere catchment. Wren Academy Church of England—we are not churchgoers and we are not close enough geographically either. Compton—not in catchment. Christ’s College—we would be in catchment for our son, but that is not much help for our daughter! Bishop Douglass—it is at heart very much a Catholic school”,
	and they are not churchgoers.
	“Henrietta Barnet is highly selective.”
	In Barnet, first preferences granted stand at just 62%, and once second preferences have been allocated, just 85% of parents secure their first or second preferences. That is well below the national average of 85% and 96% respectively. I appreciate that capital is scarce, and I appreciate the difficulties that the Minister is experiencing. I am not asking him to issue a cheque this evening, although I am pretty sure that we would name a school after him if he did: the “Gibb Academy” does have something of a ring to it.
	I hope the Minister will accept my view that we must seek to overhaul the capital allocation formula, reward good local education authorities, fund good schools so that they can flourish and expand, help parents to secure their preferences, and give pupils the best possible education and start in life. All that I ask this evening is that he agree to meet me, along with the chief executive and leader of the council, to discuss what targeted support he is able to provide.